A Dog Father Cannot Beget a Dragon Son

World 49: [Restart]

"You know, father, I really have to thank you." 

Fei Chuan moaned in pain, hands clutching the leg deliberately applying pressure on his shattered knee. Crap, this hurt worse than the 48 hour mountain hike. He might have screamed if not for the National Guard's mandatory torture conditioning. 

"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't know that such a monster existed in me. It turns out you were right all along, father." 

Fei Chuan looked down at the ground, unwilling to turn his gaze upwards. 

"What do you think? Like the taste of your own medicine?" The leg finally lifted, only to kick at the injured knee. Fei Chuan bit back a scream.

Fei Chuan closed his eyes. Then snapped them open at the feeling of wet drops gliding down his cheeks. Was he...? 

He couldn't help it, and looked up. The teary face of the child he'd watch grow up for the past 14, too short but also far too long, looked back at him. 

Those eyes met his, and Fei Chuan could see the struggle in them, as well as the shiver running imperceptibly along the arm holding the sword. The boy's mouth sneered, faltering where it counted. "What's the matter? Is there something you want to say to me?" 

"You..." Fei Chuan began, voice taut with pain and something else entirely. "Why are you....?" 

"Script!" buzzed the ring on his hand. "Follow the script!" 

Luckily, the astonishment in his voice was mistaken for anger. The boy snarled. "Why? WHY? Shouldn't I be asking you that? Why did you treat me like trash?! Why did you have to make my life a living hell?!" 

Fei Chuan couldn't say a single word.

"Why did you hate me so much?! Why did you turn me into this, this demon?!" 

He wanted to reach up, reach the young man falling apart at the seams. The ring gave a warning buzz. 

The boy kneeled down, and looked Fei Chuan in the eye. "Did you regret it? You regret it, right?" His gaze beseeched Fei Chuan to say yes, and suddenly Fei Chuan was hit with the sinking sensation that if he did, the boy would let him live, would let him to those things all over again just for a parody of love. 

This, more than anything, hardened Fei Chuan's resolve. "Kill me," he said, simply, holding the boy's gaze. "Huang San, kill me." 

"You fucking bastard!" His son screamed, and the sword shot out. Fei Chuan, impaled by a blade in a way that was so reminiscent of that first world, found himself almost ready to cry. He tried his best to stave it off by blinking, but ended up have a thin layer of wetness over his lashes. 

He looked at his son, who was suffering and convulsing in anger and grief. He looked the boy over, and found to his surprise, what could be a brilliant young man. Before Fei Chuan got to him that is. 

Taking in an unsteady breath, Fei Chuan tried,"I'm so--" 

The world turned dark. 

"--rry."Fei Chuan gazed blankly at his surroundings. For once, there was no notification screen.

 "Return to the Eternal Sands?" the comet asked, almost gently. 

"...Please." 

******

"Is it done," Fei Chuan asked, finally, tiredly.

The system paused sending out brief pulses, then said, "Yes. You have passed the critical point. [They] are no longer putting surveillance on us." 

Fei Chuan barked out a bitter laugh. "What the actual fuck. This wasn't worth it. I could have given him a much better life." 

"If you did not comply with the tasks, thousands of others would have," the system said, immediately. "[They] would eliminate you." 

"Fuck, I know, okay?" Fei Chuan snapped. He looked down at his hands, the same hands, regardless of body, that had pushed Huang San off the road of well-adjustedness and into a spiral of hatred and madness. "I'm never doing that again. You promised." 

"I promised," repeated the system. "Continue to the next world?"Fei Chuan nodded. 

"World 50: Rise of a Sect. Beginning."